


wanna know she's only mine

by mothpoem



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/F, First Date, allura is a disaster gay with a distinguished gay ascendant, background klance because they're in love in every iteration of my work, diner shenanigans, girls bein gay, just a couple of gals bein pals, mutually assured destruction because both nyma and allura are disasters, nyma: YEAH WE GAY....KEEP SCROLLING.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 03:12:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14844549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mothpoem/pseuds/mothpoem
Summary: Allura’s gaze snags, then stays.Pale-skinned and purple-eyed, with a face crafted by the star nymphs themselves, Nyma lounges languidly before Allura, spread arms resting over the top of her seat in the universal gesture forI own the place.Oh, quiznak, thinks Allura, as she reaches for her glass of water and gulps. I did not think this through.





	wanna know she's only mine

**Author's Note:**

> this is an oldish ficlet i revamped as a writing sample for the [nymallura zine](https://nymallurazine.tumblr.com/), which i am an [invited writer](https://nymallurazine.tumblr.com/post/174582556666/introducing-our-invited-writer-mothpoem-im-el) for! ٩(^ᴗ^)۶
> 
> if any of you are interested in applying, you can do so [here!](https://nymallurazine.tumblr.com/post/174247823646/applications-for-rebel-princess-are-officially)
> 
> and for any/all "and, we dream of home" readers...the final chapter is coming, i promise! i am working as fast as my dumb brain will go.
> 
> hope you enjoy this in the meantime!

✧

 _“i wanna be missed like every night / i wanna be kissed like it's the last time /_ _say you can't eat, can't sleep,_

 _can't breathe without me / i_ _wanna be held, fragile like glass / ‘cause i've never felt nothing like that.”_

**— hayley kiyoko, _wanna be missed_**

✧

The diner is a little hub of neon dropped in the middle of a world of industrial high rises.

Charmingly named _Planetside,_ it lies at the heart of the factory district on planet Attenevx. The dwarf planet, widely known for its light pollution and poor treatment of working class aliens, sits at the furthermost edge of the Scylla star system. It is, for all intents and purposes, the perfect place to disappear.

The last time she was here, her mother and her father had been overseeing eco-friendly restoration efforts on the Southern Hemisphere as part of a royal humanitarian outreach program—long gone now.

Allura tucks her face further into the hood of Lance’s scruffy old work jacket and sends the neon sign blinking down at her an uncertain look. _Bargain fare for the human-inclined!_ it proclaims, in an ever-changing assortment of languages. She thinks she might glimpse the elegant curl of an Altean _A,_ but it’s gone as quick as she can blink. A dazzling mirage.

That’s quite alright, she thinks.

It is, after all, a dead language and she's in no condition to be seeing ghosts tonight. Besides, she's fluent in over four hundred systems of communication. Her father and mother saw to it that she was, with the best lingual tutors money could buy.

With a quiet sigh, she pushes forward.

It becomes clear as soon as she steps through the automated doors into the low-lit dining space that some well-meaning Attenevx entrepreneur was looking to pay tribute to Earth when they went about interior design. In one corner of the diner, a gleaming music box with a rounded head blares some zingy summer anthem about girls who would like to have fun. In another, a cluster of alien youth are fighting for a turn on the few arcade consoles available. Allura recognizes Pac-Man from all the many pop culture “initiation lessons” she has politely sat through in the past.

“The first step to understanding human culture and our unparalleled ingenuity,” Lance had said during Initiation Lesson Number One,  “is _this.”_ He proudly thrust a scribbled drawing of a yellow head at profile into Allura’s face. Its mouth hung wide open. He then proceeded to make several alarming noises with his mouth that sounded something like _“wuh-uh-wuh-uh-wuh-uh-wuh-uh!”_

Allura nodded readily, brow grim. “A terrifying horror film of your past, no doubt. Does the yellow egg consume human flesh or some other such nonsense?”

Behind his gloved hand, Hunk began to giggle. Pidge might’ve been smirking into a fist herself.

Lance made a loud squawking noise which Allura had come to associate with shocked dismay. _“Wha—!_ No! It’s—it’s a Japanese arcade game! You play as Pac-Man and you’ve gotta navigate a dark maze and collect as many dots as you can and avoid getting killed by these four evil ghosts and—”

“That sounds horrifying,” Allura said. “You humans do this for sport, you said?”

Lance set two hands on his hips, crumpling up his helpful little diagram, and glared at Allura. “It’s how we have fun back on Earth! You know, like, with our free time!”

“Free time…” Allura mused. “Never heard of it.”

“Didn’t you guys ever do fun stuff back on Altea?” Pidge asked, with a minor adjustment made to the slant of her eyeglasses. “When you weren’t fighting the good fight and building giant mecha-cats, that is?”

“Improving conditions of life across the galaxy was always quite fun,” Allura said after a moment’s pause. She folded her hands into her lap and stared down at her knitted fingers, frowning. “I thoroughly enjoyed spreading peace and unity.”

Lance slapped a hand to his face and groaned in exasperation. “You’re a lost cause, Princess, no offense. Even _Keith_ was receptive to Pac-Man! Keith! The half-alien ninja with no concept of fashion or fun!”

“Keith is usually receptive to all things Lance, though,” Pidge said to Allura, voice pitched low and conspiratorial.

Allura nodded solemnly, silently agreeing with this observation.

“Is not!” Lance crowed, ears going beet red. “I’m telling him you said that!”

“Go ahead!” Pidge said, dodging a couch cushion intended to take her out with a snicker. “You'll just be exposing your own two-way pining!”

Hunk put a hand to Allura’s shoulder through her flightsuit. Over Pidge and Lance’s noisy pillow-duelling, he said, “Hey, that’s okay, Allura. Our definitions of fun may be a little different, but I’m sure you’ll catch on with time.”

There’d been so little room for fun on Altea, between the etiquette lessons and the lectures in diplomacy and the royal fittings and the sword and staff practice and the lion training in the stables just beyond the sprawling castle grounds and her disaster relief program, which required constant interplanetary travel and bureaucratic overhaul. Her mother said good princesses knew how to find fun in the tedium.

Before she’d had the manners hammered into her, she remembers thinking, as she walked the lip of a burbling courtyard fountain with bare feet one morning, that she must make a lousy princess.

Beside her, her mother spread an impatient hand down the seat of her lace-up breakfast dress, said, “Allura, you’ll wet your gown. Climb down from there right this instant.”

“Perhaps I want to be a sea nymph,” said Allura, the arches of her feet raised. She spun on a foot and her skirt whirled with her, silk hem skimming water. “Perhaps I want to learn to do dance on the balls of my feet, Mother. Perhaps I wish to join that band of traveling performers that just passed through the city, learn to walk a tightrope, did you ever think of that?”

“Allura,” her mother warned, tone climbing.

A maid-servant headed for the castle steps sent Allura a furtive passing glance, head ducked low. Her hair was shorn short and shone a pale pink and she had her arms—marred by long, twisting Altean markings in dark purple—wrapped around a new, fresh-smelling stack of linens.

Allura gathered up her skirt, baring her unshaven calves and thighs, and wrung the water from it, then hopped down from the stone fountain. She swept the sweaty hair back from her forehead and shot the maid-girl a winsome grin through her lashes, all teeth.

The maid-girl’s eyes bulged and she gave a sharp, choking sort of gasp. Blushing furiously, she turned her attention back to her linens and hurried up the castle steps, disappearing behind the ornate double-doors without a word.

Allura huffed an under-the-breath laugh, then shrugged at the scandalized look her mother was giving her. “What?” she said.

 _“Honestly,”_ her mother said, grabbing Allura up by the wrist and dragging her off to her chambers. “You’ll give these girls heart palpitations with the way you’re treating them. As though you’d like to court them into the next movement!”

“Maybe I would,” said Allura, mulish, and her mother sighed longsufferingly.

Now, Allura walks slowly down the aisle of booths, each done up in bunches of rainbow nightlights. She casts a quick look around, taking in all the ironic alien paraphernalia from Earth—one wall of the diner seems to be floor-to-ceiling newspaper clippings with headlines like MYSTERY AIR OBJECTS SEEN IN SKY OVER LA, or, SNOWFLAKE MAN CLAIMS TERRESTRIAL ABDUCTION—and the slew of dead-eyed minimum wage workers grilling into the night with their ample appendages.

With one last look around, Allura slides into an empty booth in the very back corner, this one wrapped heartily in roseberry-red nightlights. She leans in, watches one of the red bulbs give a weak flutter, and realizes with a start that the lights are made from dying moon moths. A rare and inhumane Attenevx practice which makes her lip curl.

Cruel, she thinks.

Then she feels guilty for the judgment, as it's being directed at a planet whose population stands at something like fifty-seven million and who hasn't seen foreign aid in over ten thousand years. She sends a silent apology to the earth beneath her feet. Discomfited, she yanks the hood of Lance's jacket lower and slouches in her seat. Her royal circlet feels damning against her forehead, a white-hot brand. The apples of her cheeks—her Altean markings—prickle unpleasantly, as sure a sign as any that she's feeling out of place in her skin.

Allura is fiddling with the screen of her menu as it blurts house specials at her when she senses movement to her left. She looks up as it’s making its way through all the available appetizers— _rotisserie-style monkey legs straight from the alps of Edalo!_ it declares—just in time to watch someone slide into the seat across from her.

Allura’s gaze snags, then stays.

Pale-skinned and purple-eyed, with a face crafted by the star nymphs themselves, Nyma lounges languidly before Allura, spread arms resting over the top of her seat in the universal gesture for  _I own the place._

Oh, quiznak, Allura thinks, as she reaches for her glass of water and gulps. I did not think this through.

Nyma tilts her head at an angle and her mouth lifts wickedly on one side, a practiced expression. All the same, it sends alarmed tingles skittering up and down Allura’s arms.

Allura shuts off her menu and clears her throat some.

“Princess,” Nyma greets.

“Nyma,” Allura returns, prim.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Nyma says slyly. “I’ll be honest, I’d never have guessed a place like this could hold your attention. Color me delighted.” She gives the diner an appraising once-over, flicks the miniature imitation spaceship hanging above their booth, watches it swing back and forth a few times, pink bulb winking. “Oh, don’t tell me. Are you into the whole ‘Earth is exotic and exciting, take a gander at the fascinating culture of four of five of our newly-appointed paladins’ gambit the whole universe is trying to sell us right now?”

“I find Earth endlessly fascinating,” she replies, plucking a napkin from a nearby dispenser and flattening it over her thighs with a sniff. “Though for none of the commercial, profit-making reasons this diner does. I simply wished to meet some place...inconspicuous. You gave me very limited options, if you must know.”

“Well, hey, congrats. You’ve found inconspicuous, I’d say,” says Nyma. She leans in a little, sends Allura a considering look. “You seen the newest _Star Wars_ movie yet? Rolo’s got it on bootleg, if you’re that into Earth culture. Clear as crystals, too. Some of the concepts are a little out there, I’ll admit, but then, humans aren’t the brightest bunch, are they?”

“And you are?” Allura retorts, over the stab of hand-me-down defensiveness she feels on behalf of all of humankind. _“You,_ who we chased down the Zorlar asteroid belt in mere minutes because you thought it clever to make off with one of the fabled Lions of Voltron?”

Nyma grins, looking, for some unknown reason, utterly taken with Allura. “Fair point, Princess.”

Allura clears her throat. “I’ve seen it already, thank you. _Star Wars,_ I mean. So...shall we…?”

Last month, Lance and Keith threw together something of an informal movie night aboard the castleship and _Star Wars_ had been among the large selection of feature films offered from Earth. Allura remembers very little. Beeping droids and a pretty girl swinging a sword made of colored light, she thinks. Lance and Keith’s dumbly blushing faces, their hands tangled beneath their shared blanket, definitely. And Hunk’s delighted cooing, of course.

“Right down to business, then,” Nyma says. She gestures to the cuffs of Allura’s olive-toned jacket. “Wearing your boyfriend’s clothes to a diplomatic meeting, though? A little unbecoming of a princess, if you ask me.”

“Boyfriend,” Allura parrots uncomprehendingly, pulling her arm back. “Last I checked, _you_ were the one who’d attempted to seduce Lance for personal gain. I’ve no interest in—”

“In…?” Nyma drawls, gaze hot on Allura’s face.

Allura’s mouth clicks shut on her surprise. She sits back in a tizzy. Sends a beseeching look to the heavens. Gods above, but she’d walked right into that one, hadn’t she? Oh, how she’d like to take a finger, or a tongue to Nyma’s distracting mouth and wipe that smug smirk from her face, though.

“That Blue Lion business—it’s like you said,” Nyma goes on, when Allura continues to sulk in her own silence. “It was all for personal gain. The laughs and the riches, you know. I was supposed to be outrunning a life sentence—hell, maybe even death—because I’d been dumb enough to let Rolo sweep me up in one of his anti-empire plots a few deca-phoebs earlier. He thought he could take Zarkon down himself, the doofus, and I was just bright-eyed enough at the time to believe him. Stealing a lion, that was our way out of that sentence, alright? I won’t pretend it wasn’t _unkind—”_

“—because it _was,”_ says Allura, eyes narrowed. “And Lance deserved absolutely none of it.”

Nyma rolls hers. “Right, yeah, but that’s the nature of war and thievery, isn’t it, Princess? Thing is, not all of us grow up in cradles wrought from solid gold. It’s a little different on the far ends of the galaxy and unfortunately, my home planet hasn’t had your family’s humanitarian programs to fall back on in over ten thousand years.”

Allura swallows hard, looking off to the side as a floating car rattles down the dirt-packed road just beyond her window, past rusting high rises that shoot up from the ground like metal talons.

“Hey,” Nyma says, insistent.

Allura looks up and meets her gaze, for once serious.

“I don’t mean to imply that it’s your fault, Princess—my circumstances,” Nyma murmurs. “It’s not, you can be sure of that. Not you or your family. The blame lies with Zarkon and his lackeys. You...your mother and your father...they did so much for the galaxy. I’ve heard the stories. Sometimes it just isn’t enough, you know?”

“I know,” Allura whispers. “I only...I only wish that it was.”

“We all do. And...and it _was,_ wasn't it? If Zarkon’s death is anything to go by, I mean,” Nyma says. She tightens a hand around the back of her seat, looking like she’s tempted to touch Allura and only barely holding herself back. “That’s why second chances exist. Hey, look, I should know! I’m a changed woman now! Rolo, too!”

Allura arches a perfectly-plucked eyebrow. “Rolo is a changed woman?”

Nyma splutters and sits up. Her cheeks have gone dark with embarrassment. She says, “I—you know what I meant!”

“Of course,” says Allura, with a tiny, involuntary smirk of her own. “And just how have you changed…?”

Nyma blinks, still visibly thrown off course and looking just the right side of flustered for Allura’s tastes. A sweet change of pace, she thinks. “Well, I,” says Nyma. “I—just last movement I told Matt his hair looked stupid! If that doesn’t count for promoting human welfare in some sector of the galaxy, I don’t know what does!”

“How very charitable of you,” Allura says, biting at the inside of her cheek to halt a foolish grin in its tracks. Her heart thrums a hard and happy rhythm beneath her chest cavity, enchanted.

“And I—I—well, I’ve been donating a little monthly sum to that Funds for Victims of Colonial Rule initiative you and your whacky uncle started! Under an anonymous name,” says Nyma. “That’s...something, I suppose. My own version of penance.”

“Why, if I didn’t know any better, Nyma,” says Allura, with the beginnings of something fond unspooling inside of her like a juniberry in full bloom, “I’d think you were trying to impress me.”

Nyma blushes to the roots of her golden hair, scowling. She ducks her head behind her menu, mutters, “It wasn’t _for_ you. But if you just so happened to catch wind along the way, well…”

“An anonymous name would seem counterintuitive, in that case,” says Allura.

Nyma shrugs, jostling her neat pigtails, and frowns down at their metal tabletop. “Maybe I hoped you’d notice my other relief work. With Matt and Rolo and all the rest of the rebels.”

Allura blinks, spine straightening. Her face feels oddly itchy with heat. “And...and if I’m understanding things correctly...you offered to do empire surveillance for me...under Emperor Lotor...and...and meet with me personally...because…”

Nyma sighs into her menu, looking disgruntled at the prospect of explaining her own motives aloud. “Because it’s _good work,_ Princess, and I know the look of a snake when I see one, being that I used to be one myself. Your little purple boy toy _reeks,_ by the way. I figure you're in dire need of a second pair of eyes. Look, I seem to be on the road to redemption anyway, so why not? And...you’re not bad company, as far as I can tell. Matt’s always going on about you like an idiot. It’s hard not to feel a little secondhand affection. And—and if I’m being honest...you caught my eye...that first day that I met you and your team. I was half-tempted to make you my mark instead of Lance, but something told me you were too smart for my tricks.”

“Wise of you,” Allura murmurs. She swallows. “You—you don’t even know me, though.”

Nyma glances up just then, dark eyes going tentative, uncertain beneath the pink-red glow of their private little alcove. “I thought that was the point of...this…”

“Which is?” Allura prompts, heart beating faster.

Nyma says, “I—well, I just thought—maybe—” but then someone is clearing their throat and their heads snap up at once.

The twelve-tentacled Attenevx native standing before them consults their digital notepad, says, “One merentine-sap sundae, for the little lady in green." They slide a bowl and a pair of spoons across the table. “And for you, my dear?”

“Oh...we’re sharing,” says Nyma, scratching sheepishly at her scalp.

Allura gives her a look. “A little presumptuous, don’t you think?”

Nyma’s cheeks pinken and she mutters, looking vaguely murderous, “Lance said that was typical of...er, shared meals between two people who are trying to get to know each other better.”

“Lance,” Allura repeats, with mock horror. She feels herself grin.

“Oh, buzz off! He claimed to have expert opinions on romance!” Nyma says, her shoulders high and defensive around her pointy ears.

“Trusting that was your first mistake,” says Allura, with a tinkling little laugh.

Nyma startles at the sound, wide-eyed. She stares with rapture at Allura’s mouth, looking like she’s just discovered one of the rarer secrets of the universe, and also, like she doesn’t plan on sharing it with any other living soul for as long as she lives.

Allura claps a hand to her mouth, flushing hot all over at the feel of Nyma’s shrewd gaze on her.

“Right...my mistake…” their server says awkwardly, prodding at their own head with two tentacles in what appears to be something of a self-deprecating gesture. “You two ladies enjoy your date!”

Nyma breaks eye contact first, says, “Thank you,” and coughs roughly into the three fingers of her right hand.

“A date,” says Allura, after clearing her throat to regain her bearings. She picks up their two spoons and offers one to her meal companion. “And you’ll be splitting the bill with me, I expect.”

Nyma opens and closes her mouth like an Altean greenwater fish. “Um,” she settles on, taking the proffered spoon. “Right. Yeah. I mean, of course. I may be a former outlaw, but I’m no cheapskate. I always pay for my dates, I’ll have you know. If...that’s what we’re agreeing to call this.”

Allura breathes a laugh and scoops up a bite of sundae with her spoon. “I suppose I...I’ve always liked your ears,” she murmurs, then shovels the bite into her mouth and averts her eyes, waiting.

“Oh,” says Nyma, perking up. She appears to be gaining in confidence once more. “Well, I—I like yours, too.”

Allura feels her face go warm, pleased. “And you…” She clears her throat. “You’re quite a bit taller than I am as well, aren’t you?”

“That I am…” says Nyma, slowly.

Allura spoons another bite into her mouth, nodding vigorously. “I’ll admit, I find your newfound interest in humanitarian work quite attractive, too, and—”

Nyma plants her elbows on the table like a lovely-looking heathen and says, “You have the most gorgeous eyes of anyone I’ve ever seen and being near you makes me nervous down to my bones.”

Allura makes a small noise of shock. She presses a napkin to her mouth and chokes her ice cream down. “Yes, um,” she says clumsily, after swallowing, “I think we can table all talk of empire surveillance in lieu of...of more pressing concerns. For now, that is.”

Nyma grins like she’s regained her balance all of a sudden, her gravity recentered. Her eyes gleam mischievously when she says, “Allura, if you’ll let me, I am going to kiss you senseless before the night is over.”

Allura sinks low in her seat, tugging Lance’s hood down over her face. Shakily, she whispers, “Oh my gods…” and Nyma laughs, and laughs, and laughs, like Altean birdsong, and Allura forgets to feel the force of the war breathing down her nape, for just a moment.

It’s the wildest sense of freedom, and fun, and affection she’s ever taken on the flat of her tongue.

**Author's Note:**

> nyma: I am a lesbiab  
> nyma: lesbiam  
> nyma: less bien  
> allura: it's okay, take your time  
> nyma: Girls
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/lancearchive) | [nymallura zine](https://nymallurazine.tumblr.com/)


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